With These Stones of Angels
by Darkness' Embrace
Summary: Beautiful things will leave us, they always do.  They just fly away.   Like butterflies, they catch the wind as they flit through the clouds, leaving Earth and all of its mundane beings behind.   And in the end?   We are what is left.


**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.**

**Warning: This story contains references to abortion.**

**With These Stones of Angels**

**I. PATER NOSTER**

_He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted._

**- Isaiah 53:3-4 **

You were forged of fire, cast of steel. Dripping, orange brilliance covered your skin, burning away every impurity that remained of your life from before. Now, you are new. No monsters hiding, waiting for you around the corner. You look at yourself carefully in the shiny, mercury-coated glass slab, and you see something that makes you inhale so hard you can feel shards of air scrape along your throat.

Who is _that_? What happened to you? You reach towards your reflection with trembling, moon-white hands. Pansy. Pansy Parkinson. Is that your name? Or is that who you used to be?

You remember when you were little. Just a toddling infant, swathed and cuddled. You had so many toys you could never keep count. They were your whole world. Sometimes, when Mommy and Daddy weren't home, and you only had Triffy the house elf for company, you would pretend that they were off doing magical, fantastical things. Maybe Daddy was saving the world right at that very moment.

Your Daddy always loved you, this you would never question as long as you lived. Whenever he was at home (which wasn't as often as you would have liked), he would sit with you on the living room floor, joking so cleverly that he had you doubled over with hysterical giggles.

Those were the best days. Muggy, slick with the moisture and padding of pure, genuine love permeating the air. On those days, you never questioned who you were. You never wondered if there was something lurking behind your smile.

You learned very early in life that Daddy and Mommy were not the same. Sugar and spice, you suppose. Mommy yelled sometimes. She screamed. Sometimes, you would creep up the sinuously curving grand staircase, her loud, choking sobs slipping through the crack under her door. You never knew what to do, but in the end you always did the same thing. You would sit there, clinging to the railing, tears just like Mommy's rolling down your cheeks until there were no tears left to cry.

All gone.

**II. ANGELUS**

_The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. _

**- Psalm 37:23-24 **

Big. Small. Aren't we all the same? We're like insects, so many of them (us?), who wing silently through the sky, night air whispering sweet nothings into their sweeping bodies. Most of these are foul, buzzing creatures, and we swat them away as easily as they come. Others we do not even see; ants building industriously, earthworms curling slowly through rich soil. Then, there are the butterflies. The pretty, giggling beauties of the insectoid world, with their thin, silk-thread wings, and brilliant, bursting colours. Everybody wants to be a butterfly. Don't you?

If someone were to ask you what sort of insect _you_ were, you wouldn't very well be able to tell them. You're not really sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the way you see somebody in the mirror that isn't really you. _It just can't be._ Maybe it's because when your mother screams at you, it becomes all you can hear. Mommy's insults and Daddy's hugs. Where does that leave us?

_Stupid, thoughtless girl! _

It becomes some sort of mantra in your head. You say it over and over again (you're just mimicking her!), and somewhere along that yellow brick road it finally sinks in that you really are_ just a stupid, thoughtless girl. _Now, every time you look in the mirror, this is who you see; this girl with the screams and the hugs and all that love just raining down upon her. Isn't that a good thing? You ought to appreciate what you have, Pansy. Nobody likes a stupid, thoughtless, _ungrateful_ girl, anyways.

It's hard for you, but you're a smart little girl. You learn. Never talk about Daddy around Mommy, especially when her eyes are bloodshot, her lips thin and dry. At some point in our lives, everybody must learn how to survive. How to breathe without choking, how to walk without falling. Some of us just learn it better.

You didn't grow up with many constants. It was always in and out, up and down. You don't really mind though, because despite what everybody else may think, you know exactly who you are. You will always be _that girl. _The thoughtless one. The loud one. The one that everybody stares at and wonders, _how does she live with herself? _It's sad, when you think about it, but you can't help but not really care.

We are defined by our flaws, and you are no exception.

**III. SALVE REGINA**

_"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." _

**- Matthew 23:27 **

It is May 1st, 1999. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the final battle; that day of all days, when everything changed for everyone. Even you. Dumbledore's tomb still sits on that little island in the middle of the black lake, resting so silently that if you just turn your head, you can imagine it isn't even there. That maybe it never was. You turn back to face it, and there it is. Silent and great.

Luckily for you, there are no apparition wards around the small body of land, or else you would have a mouthful of lake water right now. Your eyes float open as you touch solid ground, and _this cannot be real. This is a dream. _The whitewashed marble tomb still sits in the same place it did when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (you still cannot say his name, you weakling!), defaced it with his violent, malignant power. You can feel it on your skin, this supremacy, as it floats through the air around you, permeating each layer of you.

The best smiths in the wizarding world have mended Dumbledore's tomb, but to a practiced eye, each imperfection is a blinding neon light. Your hands are shaking, trembling with fear as you brush ashen fingers along the smooth ridges and hollows that remain from the brutality that this waxen, virginal tomb was subjected to.

As you stare into the reflective marble, you think you can see Dumbledore's face. Did it hurt, you wonder, when he broke you? When he took his wand and smashed you to pieces? Maybe it did, and for that, you feel sorry for him. Pain is a terrible thing. It hurts.

Abruptly, you hate the world. You despise everything about it, from the tallest tree to the thinnest earthworm. This world hurts people, and you know, _that_ _just isn't right!_ Why do we keep on doing things _that_ _just aren't right?_ WHY CAN'T WE STOP?

In your mind, you see the little boy from the orphanage, and you try to reconcile him with the angry, violent _thing_ that became so intent on the pain of others. When you think about it, you can't help but feel sorry for him. So sorry, so sad, that you can feel your heart being crushed like a Sopophorous bean with the flat of a silver dagger. Maybe that boy, that _monster_, wouldn't have turned out that way if someone had been there to hold him and scream at him and _love him_. That poor, poor, little monster boy.

Tears fall like drops of diamond that crash and splatter on the smooth, white surface of that whitewashed marble face. Guilt settles like a large, predatory bird, making your chest heavy, because you know deep in your heart that it's not this good, good man, the man lying here right now, that you're crying for. No. You're crying, sobbing really, for those pieces of dust and ash that were so carelessly tossed away. The body that was burned with no ceremony. The man (boy?) who killed so many with so little remorse. The very embodiment of evil. You cry for the devil, because you, of all people, know that evil is not born, but created. Why should little Tom Riddle be any different?

You cry for so many reasons these days, reasons that you cannot explain, but today, right now, you know that the tears you shed are for a child who turned into something nobody could ever love, simply because he had no other choice. You're crying for Tom Riddle.

_And you're crying for you._

**IV. GLORIA PATRI**

_Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die._

**- Genesis 2:16**

You remember those days. The times when there were no questions, no little cracks in your innocent heart. Your vicious, unravelling descent, what is the beginning of the end, starts out very slowly. You can feel yourself change, like a caterpillar (soon to be a butterfly?) shedding its cocoon. It happens gradually, so you really think nothing of it. It becomes you so unequivocally that you can't even remember what it's like to be in control. Sometimes, you wonder just what exactly _control is._

You've never been a pretty girl. Never one of those darling things with shining faces and slim hands. It makes you sad, the fact that you will never be able to walk into a room and know without a doubt that you're the most beautiful, the most intelligent, _the most something. _When you cry at night because you can see your Draco's eyes sinuously follow the curve of little Astoria Greengrass' neck, you think of your Mother's words. On those rare, happy days when she used to sit with you in the sun room overlooking the garden, her delicate fingers smoothing back your obsidian hair.

_ Remember dear, a man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman with beautiful legs or glowing skin. If you use the right words at the right time, who needs beauty at all?_

Those words have followed you, whispering their sweet melody in your ears for as long as you can remember. They have become your motto, the mantra by which you live your life. They have not failed you yet.

_Come on, Pansy, I barely looked at her! Relax. You're making a scene._

You're surprised Draco even notices anymore. You make 'scenes' on a daily basis. You just can't seem to help it. The eyes of the crowd are like windows into a place that you have never been nor will ever go. The forbidden fruit. It draws you in like a moth to flame, and as you yell at Draco, as you pound his chest with your fists for staring so longingly at that _blastedly beautiful_ girl, you can feel the kiss of a forked tongue on your cheek, and the delicate weight of six tiny pomegranate seeds grasped tightly in your clenched fists.

Those years, stretched out like thick, pounding arteries, are forever branded in your mind. White hot; each and every wild, drunk action searing into you as deep as you go. There is nowhere inside you that has not yet been found. _It is you._ You look back now, and remember the desperation that tinged the air, the absolute horror you felt the night after that huge, public fight with your one true love. You were scared, more frightened than you had ever been in your life. And it was all for him. You can remember the exact moment when you decided, when you realized just what exactly it was that you lived for. Not you, not them, not even _him_. Just the screams and the hugs and _all that love. _

By the following evening, Draco had forgotten all about cherubic little Astoria Greengrass, because you showed him just how _uncherubic_ you could be. You told yourself it was beautiful, the way you gave yourself to him in every way possible, the way you made him yours. You simply chose to ignore the fear; the violent, panicky fear that bubbles up your throat whenever you think of your lost innocence. _He's yours. He's yours. _What you forget to remember, is that now, you belong to him as much as you do to you.

But _this is what you must do. This is what you must do._

**V. AVE MARIA**

_Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness. _

**- Leviticus 19:29**

It's warmer in here than you imagined it would be. You've pictured this trip a thousand times in your mind, planned it down to each footstep. You wear a loose, dark hooded sweater – muggle clothing, of course – so that the protesters standing outside with their slowly flickering candles cannot see your face. You walk straight in, not sparing them a single glance, but you can see the reflections of those little balls of light suspended in the air against the glass front of the clinic.

Everybody who walks into a muggle abortion clinic expects something. Something sinister. You step in the door and walk through the small vestibule, expecting to feel a rush of icy air, or to see the ghosts of dead babies winging through the air.

_Whispering things._

There is none of this. The lights are dull and yellow, and the only things that give away what this place is are the artfully arranged flyers, the clinical smell of hospital disinfectant, and the sobbing redhead sitting in the corner of the waiting room, her eyes swollen with tears. You look away.

There are only three other women in the waiting room, and you find a seat as far away from them all as possible. You're each just as guilty as the next, after all. Looking down at the scuffed trainers you're wearing (so tacky!), you wonder how you got here. Sitting in this rickety plastic chair, wearing ugly muggle clothes, hood up in some hick town muggle abortion clinic, because you _just can'_t face your own world right now.

_Not like this._

Pansy Parkinson. Draco Malfoy's one and only. Destined to be the perfect pureblood wife with the perfect husband and perfect family and _the_ _perfect_ _everything. _What happened to you?

A little drop of pain spills on to the insipid gossip magazine you have clutched between your fingers. You gave everything to him, that beautiful boy. And here you are, reading about muggle celebrities as you wait to kill his child. _Your child. _

Life happens, and it goes a little something like this.

You loved him. He 'loved' you too. You gave him everything. _Pomegranate seeds. A moth to the flame. _Now, he and that _blastedly beautiful _Astoria Greengrass are booked in for a spring wedding. Why? You wondered that for a while, too. But now you think you just might understand. Maybe it had something to do with the way you could sleep with him and scream at him all in the space of thirty minutes. Or how you when you fought, you yelled loudly enough for everyone to hear just exactly what you thought of him. You wanted _everyone_ to know _everything_, because there was just something so, so forbidden about it. Something you had to have_. _

Well, you've got it now, don't you? You've got the screams, the hugs, and _all that love._ Everything you've ever needed.

But when you open your eyes, you're still right here.

And that, is the greatest love of all.

**FIN**

**A/N This story was written for astronauts' 'Psychological Disorders Competition'. The prompts were Pansy Parkinson and Histronic Personality Disorder; people who's self-esteem depends on the approval of others and does not arise from a true feeling of self-worth, causing unstable emotions and attention seeking behaviour. For more detailed information and therefore a better understanding of this story, please go to the Psych Central Website and search for 'Histronic Personality Disorder'****.**

**Translations:**

_**Pater Noster **__**–**__ Our Father._

_**Angelus **__**–**__ Angel._

_**Salve Regina **__**–**__ Holy Queen._

_**Gloria Patri –**__ Glory Be._

_**Ave Maria**__**–**__ Hail Mary._


End file.
